The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos 1933-1945
In collaboration with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Project MUSE will host a new fully digital Open Access publication of the most comprehensive scholarly resource on persecutory sites: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945.
The new digital Encyclopedia, which will be hosted on our platform by early 2025, will provide readers with an intuitive and comprehensive experience of the planned seven volume series and its unprecedented documentation of tens of thousands of camps, ghettos, and other persecutory sites operated by the Nazis and their allies. This exclusive open access research curated by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum offers unparalleled insights into the network of persecutory sites operated by the Nazis and their allies.
View the press release for more information on this collaboration.
The Seven-Volume Encyclopedia and Accompanying Database on the Holocaust Nazi Camps and Ghettos
The first four volumes, published between 2009 and 2022, detail 3,600+ sites operated by the Nazi regime and its allies, including several hundred previously undocumented ghettos.
This monumental 7-volume encyclopedia, the result of more than 25 years of work by the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, provides comprehensive documentation of camps, ghettos, and other persecutory sites that the Nazi regime and its allies operated in a vast network spanning from Norway in the North to North Africa in the South, and from France in the West to the Soviet Union in the East. Approximately 6,000* sites will be documented in narrative format in volumes 1 through 7. A database will also be available of roughly 38,000 additional forced labor camps for which little information is known other than their location.
The Encyclopedia will launch in its expanded digital format on Project MUSE by early 2025, comprising content from the four previously published volumes:
Volume II: Ghettos In German-Occupied Eastern Europe
Volume III: Camps And Ghettos Under European Regimes Aligned With Nazi Germany
Volume IV: Camps and Other Detention Facilities under the German Armed Forces
Upcoming Volumes that will be published in future years include:
Volume V: Nazi Sites for Racial Persecution, Detention, Resettlement, and Murder of Non-Jews
Volume VI: Extermination, Labor, and Transit Camps for Jews
Volume VII: Camps for Foreign Forced Laborers and accompanying database
The digital format will also provide the opportunity to update entries. For more information about the research, including editorial teams and what each encyclopedia covers, visit the USHMM website.
Resources to Advance Holocaust Studies
This resource is invaluable for scholars, researchers, educators, students, librarians, archivists, Holocaust survivors, digital humanists and descendants, advocacy organizations, nonprofits, and the general public. It provides a comprehensive and authoritative source of information on Nazi persecutory sites, grounded in research conducted in hundreds of archival collections, and using survivor and eyewitness testimonies, memoirs, diaries, and memory books. Users will be able to explore the history, causes, consequences, and legacies of the Holocaust, deepen their understanding of this tragic period, and contribute to ongoing research, education, remembrance, and advocacy efforts.
Sign up for our email newsletter to stay informed about upcoming events, podcasts, and exclusive content surrounding the launch of the first four volumes hosted on MUSE, as well as for each new encyclopedia release. Don't miss out on the opportunity to engage with historic research and connect with fellow enthusiasts in the field of Holocaust studies.
Funding for the new digital Encyclopedia is provided in part with assistance from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, sponsored by the Foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future," and supported by the German Federal Ministry of Finance.
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